


Isn't It Romantic?

by tesalutat



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Insecurity, Love Confessions, Sort Of, canon typical language, capitalists in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27236344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tesalutat/pseuds/tesalutat
Summary: Ever since Gerri became the CEO of Waystar Royco she has constantly been finding herself in the company of the one and only Roman Roy. She’s been told to use Logan’s office but she can’t bring herself to sit at the man’s desk, his disgraced ghost looming over the space like a blanket soaked in piss. She could move to any other office in the building, of course, but she could just as easily work in her COO’s office, surely, why ever the fuck not.Or the one about defining relationships.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	Isn't It Romantic?

Ever since Gerri became the CEO of Waystar Royco she has constantly been finding herself in the company of the one and only Roman Roy. She’s been told to use Logan’s office but she can’t bring herself to sit at the man’s desk, his disgraced ghost looming over the space like a blanket soaked in piss. She could move to any other office in the building, of course, but she could just as easily work in her COO’s office, surely, why ever the fuck not.

_Roman still needs some supervision,_ she reasons with herself. 

_Communication is much smoother this way,_ she tells the various people who dare to ask. 

_I like the view._ She nearly winks at Roman before she stops herself.

It suits them well, surprisingly so. She seems to have a calming effect on Roman, who manages to actually do some real work instead of being a dramatic decoration. Half of the time he isn’t even hitting on her, an exceptional show of strength. 

She likes his company, for better or worse, enjoys their banter and the way he doesn’t treat her like a useful piece of furniture. Well, most of the time. But her favorite part of the day by far comes with the late evenings when the building starts to empty and the silence creeps in. Neither of them has to stay that late. It became their little ritual, something just for the two of them.

This particular evening is no exception. She is going over the newest report on fuck ups and disasters (there seems to be no shortage of those) and Roman… is in the room, listens to her occasional remarks and offers entirely unhelpful commentary. Although… He’s been silent for a long time and she immediately realizes he is watching her, thinking about her in _that_ way.

“I first jerked off to you when I was sixteen.” 

“Oh my god,” she turns to him with wild eyes. It’s not the most shocking thing he ever told her, it’s the suddenness of it that startles her. 

He chuckles. “You caught us, me and Ken, smoking by the fucking… fax machines and you went off on us.”

“Oh? Is that all it takes?” She could take this from zero to a hundred, it would be so so easy. Like the crack of a whip. She had learned to handle Roman, how to train him, almost, like a puppy. He can get so overly excited. And she is well aware of the power of her insults. And of the effect they have on him. It would only take a word.

“You’re lucky it wasn’t your father.” Not today.

Roman makes a face as if she just ruined his perfect wanking memory. She smiles at him, apologetically, and takes off her glasses to rub the bridge of her nose. They’ve been killing her for the past hour. “I better get going.”

“Noooo…” he wailes and jumps from where he’s sprawled over the sofa, suddenly stopping her in her tracks. “Don’t go just yet, Gerri. We could… I don’t know, fuck in the supply closet. How about that?”

“Some other time.” She smiles and gently puts her hand on his cheek. She leans in, for an absolutely chaste platonic _motherly_ kiss on the cheek, when the _bastard_ moves and their lips meet. 

_Fuck_.

\---

Roman paces in his office, every now and then sitting down in more and more preposterous positions all over the furniture, obsessively checking his phone while Frank is monologuing about something vaguely unimportant. 

“...this could kill us, you should probably…”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He checks his phone again and goes to messages for the hundredth time. Still no response from Gerri. He reads his own messages again. 

_Heyy, you up?_ _[eggplant emoji]_

_Can I call you? [smirking face] [fire emoji]_

_Gerri?_

_Gerri_

_Fuck you_

“Nothing but classy,” he mutters to himself, putting the phone back in his pocket. 

He walks by Frank and looks out of the window, frowning. He takes out his phone again, this time going to emails. There is one from Gerri, from early in the morning, that he’s read more times than he can count. She’s gone to Washington to meet with some assholes, for two days, alone, and he is supposed to stay in the HQ to oversee some other corporate bullshit he already forgot. Addressed to all senior management. “Fucking group text. That’s just nasty.”

“Roman, am I keeping you from something?” 

“Huh? Yeah, actually. I’ll just, uh run something past you, okay?” He puts his phone back into his pocket and finally faces the man in his office. “So I met someone and we’re fucking. Sort of. And I kissed her and now she ignores me. Got any advice?” 

“I’d advise you to not pay hookers with company money,” Frank almost growls and leaves, only stopping in the doorframe. “I’ll send you what I was saying here for the past twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, fuck off, Frank, you hooker-less shit.” Roman says more to himself than to Frank, who is already halfway down the hall anyway.

He didn’t expect Frank to be any help and regrets blurting the question out at all. He got distracted, as he often does unless Gerri is in the room, smiling at him, looking at him like he’s an idiot (she is always right, he isn’t lying to himself about _that_ ), or even silently working, playing with her glasses, putting an escaped strand of hair behind her ear, just being in his presence. 

He’s always liked Gerri, can’t remember a time when that wasn’t true. She has always been by his side one way or the other, keeping up with his feverishly unfocused mind, helping him to get what he wants and never asking for anything in return. For a long time he thought she was just secretly selfless like that, under the dangerous killer lawyer queen facade, but recently it’s dawned on him that she just might be specifically nice to _him_. The thought of that makes him smile, makes him want her even more than before. 

He takes out his phone again, his finger hovering over Gerri’s number and then deciding to send a message instead. 

_What did I do?_

\---

She calls him that evening. He’s slightly drunk and half asleep. He puts her on speaker, partly out of habit (he's fairly certain he will need his hands at some point), partly because he can't be bothered to hold anything. It's that kind of day.

“Hello, Rome.” She sounds uncharacteristically timid. “Have you burnt the place down yet?”

He chuckles, smirk already creeping up on his face. “Working on it. Frank already thinks you’re sucking my dick for money so phase one is done.”

“Oh yeah?” He hears the amusement in her voice and pictures her, smiling, in her bed, fully clothed because of course she must be. Or maybe... His mind starts to gather speed. Maybe she just got out of the shower, her hair damp and tousled, a towel the only thing covering her body… Or she’s completely naked, a thought that almost eradicates the few rational cells in his brain and sends him spiraling, longing to hear her voice commanding him to do shit for her, his employee, technically, the poor relative, relatively, the invisible mole woman, yet so fucking powerful it makes him want to fuck her brains out and die. 

“But you wouldn’t touch me.” He says unzipping his pants, almost automatically starting their usual bedtime routine. “You wouldn’t touch a failure like me, _Gerri_. You’re too fucking good for that.” 

There’s a pause. Too long for his liking. 

“I wouldn’t touch you with a pole, you disgusting little shit.”

He breathes in sharply, suddenly remembering her face when he kissed her. And the fact she spent the whole day ignoring him, fleeing from him to the district of cuntfuckery, leaving him because… She _is_ too good for him. And this time, the thought of that is _not_ sexy and it stings like a bitch. 

“Stop.”

\---

She’s not entirely sure how she got home the day before, after Roman kissed her. It’s all in a haze like if she were riding a convertible through a tunnel, the air muffling every noise, the light from the end of the tunnel blinding her. She must have said something to him, after the kiss, something cruel or cold, something that stuck with him. She can’t fathom why he would send her that pleading message otherwise. Or why he is willing to stop their _other_ evening ritual.

On her part it is completely rational, or at least she _rationalizes_ it. Roman is the first man to kiss her since Baird’s death. It surprised her, and in spite of the thrill she feels whenever something unexpected comes up at work she does not like surprises when they get personal. A kiss is personal, a kiss like that is romantic (oh, how she loathes the pun potential of that), it means more than their special conference calls or the constant heavy-handed flirting in the office. She doesn’t want to deal with what “more” means. 

“Roman. What’s wrong?” 

“What’s… You’re asking me what’s wrong?” He sounds frantic, annoyed, a little scared. “I’m usually the last one to say something like that but we need to fucking talk about yesterday, Gerri.”

She gets up from where she’s sitting on the queen sized hotel bed, her silky pajamas gently rustling with every movement, and gets a glass and a bottle of whiskey from the conveniently placed minibar. She puts Roman on speaker, noticing that her hand is slightly shaking. _Goddammit, Roman._ She takes a deep breath before answering.

“I’m sorry, okay?” She doesn’t like apologizing, it makes her feel weak and vulnerable, just the two things she can’t afford to be in the corporate world. Or in life. “I didn’t…”

Words never failed her before, she is a brilliant lawyer after all. Used to handling delicate matters. But now she feels the headache coming with every single second. She feels much more like herself when he’s begging her to insult him. She has the power she feels she always deserved but never got entirely. She needs that, she wants that. And him. 

“I wouldn’t object if we did it again.” 

“It didn’t look like that yesterday,” he snaps. “It looked like you… that I disgusted you. You practically ran from me.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She pours herself another drink. There’s an oppressive silence clinging to her every breath to the point where she checks if he’s still on the line. Maybe it would be better if he hung up and burned this bridge. Burned this whole affair to the ground. 

“Rome…” 

“Do I disgust you, Gerri?” His tone doesn’t hide anything. The feeling of protectiveness almost overwhelms her. He’s crawled so far into her heart, the adorable bastard, that she’s started to feel like he is a part of her. The thought of losing him because of one stupid kiss makes her sick. 

“I didn’t run from you because… I wanted to be away from you.” 

“Then why?”

“You know why.” 

It is business, first and foremost, or so she is telling herself. It is the desire to get to the top, whatever it takes, sit on that fucking billionaire throne of bile and not be alone. She believes in him and she knows herself, she knows she can get him to that position. They are already so close, the perfect ticket, it is just a matter of time before he proves himself to his father and fucks over everyone else. 

But deep inside she feels like it doesn’t matter at all. That she would be happy in her humble villa by the vineyards. Only people like the Roys can see that as subpar.

“Oh yeah?” And here he is, back to the real business at hand. He doesn’t need much to be saved from drowning, he grabs that life jacket of a confession with such ease, as if nothing happened, as if he wasn’t ready to destroy himself just a second earlier. She knows he… no, they are out of the woods and he knows she knows. The “more” between them is on the table, so obvious and painfully clear. So easy. One phone call.

She rolls her eyes and smiles. “Your inferiority fantasies are not indicative of how I feel about you. You should know that. I don’t want to speak of it ever again. Good night, Roman.”

“Good night, mommy girlfriend.”

“Oh, fuck you!” 

“Love you too.”

She grabs her phone and her glass of whiskey and lets herself slowly fall onto the hotel bed. She never expected for something like this to happen. Yet here she is, getting drunk and thinking about Roman Roy. Maybe even in _that_ way.

**Author's Note:**

> All the credit goes to Kieran Culkin for "mommy girlfriend". Also for looking at J. Smith-Cameron in _that_ way.
> 
> I also want to thank my wonderfully patient beta [kahvi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi). Love you!


End file.
